Michelle Obama has been visiting Mulberry School for Girls, in London. During her speech, she drew parallels between her impoverished background and that of the girls there. With dedication and hard work, she implied, they too could succeed. But then the question is, what is success?
Michelle Obama has accomplished a considerable amount in her career, but the fact is, she would not have been heard of beyond a quite narrow circle had it not been for the man she married. Hillary Clinton has achieved a considerable amount – Secretary of State, presidential candidate, champion of women. But we know few of these things would have been accomplished had it not been the man to whom she was married. Classy and good-looking though Jackie Kennedy was, she would have been a relative nonentity had she not married John F Kennedy. Laura Bush was a primary school teacher and a librarian; she would have been unheard of had she not married Gorgeous George.
There are exceptions, of course, like Irish Presidents Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese. They gained their position through their own qualities, not through those of a relative. On a more trivial level, who would have heard of Kitty O’Shea or Monica Lewinsky, had they not become embroiled sexually with Charles Stewart Parnell and Bill Clinton respectively.
Things have improved, of course. Since the early days of the twentieth century, when women weren’t allowed to vote and golf clubs refused to allow women to become members, we’ve moved on (with the obvious exception of the Orange Order). But if we really believe women are equal to men, then more attention should be paid to those barriers that are blocking their progress and once identified, they should be removed. It’s not just that young women should see their goal as something more than becoming arm-candy for a rich or powerful man; in politics, we can’t afford to turn away the contribution of brains and ability that women can offer.
Time for Adams to step aside then and let a very competent lead SF?
I presume you forgot to include ‘woman’, John? Freudian slip maybe. SF doesn’t need a competent leader – it’s got a truly outstanding one. His successor should be the best the party has to offer. That could well include a woman.
The Orange order has female lodges and many female members you must get your information right.
As for your blog you missed out the most important female politician ever a certain Margaret Thatcher a fantastic and far sighted woman who smashed the unions and beat up the Argies if only we had a leader like that now.
You’re nothing if not a laff, neill. Margaret Thatcher ruined more lives and arranged for hundreds of people to be killed. If you admire that kind of thing, why not go with someone really fantastic like Josef Stalin?
You didnt notice the irony about your pop at Thatcher then you went unto say that SF doesn’t need a competent leader – it’s got a truly outstanding one how many lives has the bearded one ruined?
Thatcher was a tremendous woman who won three elections who left a fantastic impression Adams is little more than a backstreet hood who covered up child abuse in his own family
Oh neill, neill – I think you should stop digging. There’s no irony in my criticism of Thatcher, I assure you – I mean every word. I have no idea how many people’s lives Gerry Adams has ruined – do you? And would you apply the same criteria to Thatcher or, say, Churchill? We know their political careers are littered with ruined lives, ruined communities and dead bodies. As for winning three elections – so did Tony Blair – does that make him a good, let alone a great man? Thatcher certainly left an impression – a bit like Cromwell did. As to GA being a ‘backstreet hood’ – Mmm. If he’d been middle-class would that have been better? And I think you’ll find the courts have concluded different re any question of child-abuse cover-up in his family….Right, neill. That’s THREE times I’ve responded to you today. Sit up straight and stop looking for attention, please…
Don’t flatter yourself Jude!
I find it amazing that you view Thatcher and Churchill in such a black and white way and strangely view Adams through rose tinted glasses
Btw they didn’t clear Adams over his role in turning a blind eye to child abuse in his family far from it.
Even if Adams came from Royalty I would view him as a backstreet man
I can’t believe you’re a snob, neill. Do you come from old money or new? As to Thatcher and Churchill – I think it’s fair to provide some counter-current to the tsunami of glorification that both British PMs routinely receive. Yes, you could say, Thatcher made sure a lot of chaps in London made lotsamoney, in the term of the day; and you could say Churchill helped rally the spirit of the British people against Nazism. On the other hand, Thatcher arranged for the Belgrano to be torpedoed as it was sailing away, threatening no one, and thus was responsible for over 300 deaths. (Even the Omagh bombers pale to insignificance before those kind of figures). And Churchill got up to some pretty ghastly stuff during the Boer War, as I’m sure you know. Whatever you may say about GA, it’s doubtful if he could have matched the Thatcher/Churchill scale of killings. And of course the other interesting difference is that Thatcher/Churchill did their killings thousands of miles from home…
So a woman can become a fully-fledged member of the Orange Order, neill? If that’s the case I’ll be happy to highlight my mistake.
“…beat up the Argies…”
Neill, your ambiguity in relation to violence is noted.
No what I was doing was being jingoistic as for support of violence I am sure on many times I have made my position perfectly clear has everybody else on this blog done the same?
Ok, so in being ‘jingoistic’ you support the ‘beat[ing] up the Argies’?
Alright, Neill, I retract my orginial assertion that your ambiguity in relation to violence is noted.
It’s not ambiguous. It’s overt. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I am not criticising you – that’s your prerogative. It’s just helpful that we are all honest when communicating.
On a different note: why are British people jingoistic but all others are Nationalist (said with a sneering ‘N’)?
While there is some doubt, Esteemed Blogmeister, about the origin of the oft-repeated chestnut ‘behind every great man there is a great woman’ no such doubt applies to a sister quote.
-Behind every great man a woman may be seen rolling her eyes.
That would be Jim Carrey, the Canadian goof-ball comedian. Perkie’s inner defender of the wearing of outside suspenders by both genders, suspects that more rather than less folk are more familiar with the latter quote than the former, even though less is more, more or less.
In a word: women have always been to the fore in holding the political reins while remaining in the background. For their unfailing instinct unfailingly tells them that this is a surer route to durability.Or,so they tell us so themselves, erm, unfailingly.
Three examples will suffice.
1. Lady Macbeth. The wee lassie from the High Heel Lands nailed it in one when she remarked:
– Fie, my lord, fie ! A soldier and afraid?
What need we fear who knows it
When none can call our power to account?’
By ‘we’ of course she meant ‘I’. For, in true queeny-to-be style she uses the royal plural in anticipation, much in the manner of Hausfrau Saxe-Coburg-Goth.
(When’s the last time anyone heard a syllable of diss directed towards the adorable Missus W.?)
2. Eleanor Roosevelt. Her husband was a part-time president but a full-time philanderer. This led the redoubtable Mrs. Roosevelt to exact revenge by switching the bedside tumblers of water in which each White House spouse kept his or her dentures overnight.
This led to the phenomenon of the bould Eleanor never failing to give the impression (correct, as it happened) of always appearing in public with her large mouth stuffed with another’s oversized dentures.
This so intimidated the cowed FDR (for it was he !) that he was led to conduct his affairs in even more clandestine circumstances. With the likes of – remember, this is the US of A – Daisy Suckling and the truly intimidating Missy LeHand, his privates, oops, private secretary. Sometimes, indeed, in the closet.
Thus, while coming out of the closet is a current, erm Presidential fad of sorts, FDR went in the opposite direction. Difficult to say whether he was ahead of his time and that his precedent might yet take precedence.
Not at all difficult, however, to guess who wore the flannels in the White House during that particular presidency..
3. The First Lady of a former Taoiseach whose name shall remain under wraps. For the following display of wifely influence was observed at first hand by, erm, Perkie’s outer Burro-crat. Hence, the thirty year rule enjoins upon him,and quite properly, not to hee-haw, hee-haw about anything he-saw, he-saw.
Except to say that while the new Taoiseach-elect was away to Aras an Uachtarain to receive his Seal of Office from El Presidende, the wife of the Taoieach-elect was already in his Oval Office to be in Government Buildings doing a spot of, erm, Quality Control in anticipation.
Thus, any female staff member whose looks did not fit into the category, bordered on one side by the Front End of a Rhino and the Back end of a Double-decker Bus on the other, was summarily dismissed to the outer reaches of said stately Edwardian building.
Etna Cleansing doesn’t even begin to describe this pre-emptive strike.
Little wonder that the nickname for the Mandatory Oath associated with the Official Secrets Act was – and still is – referred to as: The Garrote.
Indeed, if one had some piano wire one could even play a tune on it.
Or use it in conjunction with a neighbourhood lamp-post…The stuff you know, Perkie. When did you retire from the grinding world of classrooms to the shimmering world of Taoiseach territory?
Oh, dear.,Esteemed Blogmeister.
As you didn’t specify whether you wanted a reply or a Civil Service reply I’ll opt for a blend of both.
Being quite incapable, alas, of anything else at this remove.
A bit vague on actual dates, but I can say for sure it took one a while to get from the chalk face to the place where the biological clock watchers mark time.
A deal longer indeed than it took, say, for Dickie Rock to walk from the Candy Store on the Corner to the Chapel on the Hill. Or rather Dic Roc as he later came to be known, with the passage of the old tick tock.
– At seventeen it’s a thrill
To dream some day you will.
Indeed, Perkie’s inner pen pusher first began to dream of being there, doing that and wearing the T-shirt of the T-shock’s Shack during the Summer of the Seventeenth Dail.
Alas, it took a deal of chalk-stick flinging before one’s dream became a reality and one’s nightmare posting eventually came true.
Though ‘shimmering’ as in ‘the shimmering world of’ might not quite be the first adjective that springs to mind.
‘Simmering’ would, perhaps, be a lot closer to the mark. The eight letter of the alphabet was not exactly the flavour of the month the Summer one took the Official Secrets Oath.
For not only ‘h’ but its bigger blockier bro ‘H’ were both tip-toed around with fingers to the lips and avoided at all costs. Any apparatchik who, erm, ‘ungered for a leg up the ladder of promotion knew better than to wear a face as long as Bangladesh.
That’s why the sight and sound of S. Donlon of ‘onorary Doctorate fame coming all over as a born-again Snaking Regarder on the Collusion prog on RTE was such a ‘oot.
Ta suil agam go bhfreagraionn sin do cheist, A Mhaistir Ionuin Blog / One trusts this answers you question, Esteemed Blogmeister.
Politics needs women…it seems Goldman Sachs is of the same opinion. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
I have a lot of respect for women but I will be blunt and honest I have very little for any female politician. On the other hand I have massive respect for female scientists such as Marie Curie who was the first female scientist to win the Nobel Prize Physics and the only female so far to win the Nobel Prize twice, she later won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry too. This was all done in the early 1900’s, quite an achievement, especially in that era.
Then there was Mary Buckland who was born in 1797 who was a palaeontologist, marine biologist and scientific illustrator. She contributed massively to early Paleontology.
Lise Meitner was a nuclear scientist born in 1878. She won numerous prizes in Nuclear Physics.
Kate Gleason was an engineer and business woman born in New York in 1865. Her parents were both Irish immigrants. She was the first woman ever to be admitted to Cornell University to study engineering. Her father founded the machine tool company “Gleason Works” which is still today one of the worlds most important machine tool cutting companies. Kate later took control of the company and made it a success.
And the list goes on….
Of course, I also have respect for all the women all over the world who do the most difficult job in the world and that’s raising a family and often juggling a career too.
What about Debbie Reynolds? She was great in ‘Singin’ In The Rain’….
Jude
I recall a story about Hilary and Bill driving through her home town while campaigning for his second term. Hilary spotted the guy she used to date working as a gas pump (petrol pump to you Jude) attendant.
“You see” said Bill, “if you hadn’t met me, you’d be the wife of a gas pump attendant now.”
“No” replies Hilary, “if I hadn’t met you, he would be President now”.
Just possibly true.
Yep – heard that one too, gio – about Bill and HILLARY….:) As the Italians say (in Italian), if it’s not true it should be.
Jude
She is 1 ell of a woman, but you can go 2 ell for all I care!
Going to disagree with you to an extent Jude – you could make the argument that those men would never have become such prominent public figures/household names without the woman standing at their side – team effort! I too would like to see more women prominent in politics because I think they’re good at it – without professing allegiance to a party on these islands I’m thinking Sturgeon, MacDionald, Long off the top of my head. I watched the leaders debate for the British Labour Party earlier and their female representatives leave a lot to be desired – Cooper is a career politician who never answers a straight question and Kendall should be a Tory.